The tree

Evening light at Mount Galbraith. The city you can see down there is Golden (you can clearly see the Coors brewery) and in the distance is Denver. From a few weeks ago on a quick afternoon hike. As always click the image for a bigger view.


The tree. Buy a print.
Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 at 11mm, f/11, 1/160s, ISO 200

Image link on flickr. Google+ post.

Sequioa

This is an image of a group of giant sequioa that can be seen in the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park. This group is very well known and is called the "Bachelor and the Three Graces." As the google link before shows, one can find thousands of images of this across the web. This photo breaks all the rules you are supposed to follow for the photography of these trees. They should be in fog (no fog for any of the days we were in Yosemite so no go there), snow (no snow in Yosemite this year!), and definitely not full sunlight. I largely just focused on the composition of the image with the foreground tree dark and brooding and the background trees (the graces in the name) in radiant sunlight and to juxtaapose these. I basically took it to hone my skills. To my surprise it actually is quite an interesting image. I made a 16x20 print of it that is just luminescent with beautiful deep but detailed shadows and radiant highlights. The detail on the bark in this high resolution image is stunning (at least I think so ;-) ). The image is pretty close to how it came from camera and stitching.


Bachelor and three (?) graces. Buy a print.
Composite of 12 images. D300, ISO 200, nikkor 18-55mm at 48 mm, f/11, 1/10s. Circular polarizer.

I also generated a tighter image that I took to black and white. It is meant to convey the size and solidity of the trees by excluding most of them.


trunks. Buy a print.
Composite of 9 images. D300, ISO 200, nikkor 18-55mm at 48 mm, f/11, 1/10s. Circular polarizer.

For those socially inclined:
Flickr image. Google+ post.

Sailing the Bay

From 2012-01-03

That is me on our friends Jim and Deb's beautiful sailboat steering around the San Francisco bay. Here we're close to going under the Bay bridge heading towards the SF cityfront. Photo by Mariska. I'll post some more pictures I took around the bay at a later time.

Google+ post on this.

Ice Fall

This image was taken on Christmas day at Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park. I hiked up to this falls and the next one with my daughter. This year, there was basically no snow whatsoever in Yosemite making the waterfalls run very low. People working in the park were all worried and surprised by this long drought. Normally this falls is as wide as the lighter area you can see in the image. It was cold enough however for the water mist to freeze up. Quite spectacular. I tried to capture the extreme contrast in light and feeling between warm mountain and cold waterfall here.


Ice fall. Buy a print.
50 MP Composite of 9 images from a Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 18-55 mm DX lens at 32 mm, f/11, and 1/4 second shutter. Field of view equivalent to using a 11.5 mm lens on DX or 17 mm on FX.
Same image on flickr. Google+ post on the image.

Resolutions

Last year around this time, I resolved to lose some weight as many people do every year. I wasn't that much overweight and nobody had told me that I needed to, but my spouse was going to lose weight and I thought it would be good to help her by showing solidarity. My goal was to go for my college weight which was between 145 and 150 lbs (65 kg or so in real SI units instead of silly imperial units (how many ounce in a pound again?)). Amazingly I reached that goal around May exactly on schedule (see figure on the right) and have been maintaining it since. What's the secret? Very simple. I just restricted caloric intake and exercised regularly. In my case, I was always very active but simply ate too much and drank too much beer. The body is a pretty straightforward calculator in this respect. If you take in more calories than you burn, you'll gain. Take in less and you'll lose. Take in as much as you burn and you will be stable. Of course people differ in how many calories they burn just living so the equilibrium point is different for different people. You just need the discipline to actually do it and have ways of exercising that are effective for you. My two major ways of exercising are mountain biking and hiking with heavy backpacks (photo gear) in the mountains. Both extremely caloric. So if you are considering resolving to lose weight, realize that it can be done if you stick to it, be honest with yourself, and don't get tempted by silly diets. Just follow Pollan's excellent advice to eat food, and not too much. Food meaning something that our great grandparents would have recognized as food.

The screenshot on the right is from the excellent iPhone app Loseit. It is very effective and free. There are many tools like this to help you if you need it, but simply being aware of what you eat and not eating as much as you might normally works just fine too.

Now I just need new New Year's resolutions for next year.